Local Evaluation of Children's Services Learning from the Children's ...

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highlighted in Table 1). These include: knowledge-driven model (an organisation’swork is driven by evaluation); problem-solving model (evaluation is used to solveproblems/address specific questions/provide a knowledge base for decision making);enlightenment model (evaluation provides a greater understanding of concepts andissues) interactive-model (practice and evaluation interactively influence oneanother); political/tactical model (evaluation is drawn on selectively by anorganisation to legitimise decisions). It is also useful here to draw on the distinctionmade by Clarke (2001): evaluation findings tend to be used by organisations in twoways instrumentally and conceptually. The former denotes the ways organisationsmay act directly on evaluation findings in terms of, for example, changing practicesand deciding to fund particular activities; the latter denotes the ways evaluationmaterial may influence organisations’ understanding of concepts more broadly, andthereby informing strategies and strategic thinking.In practice there were mixed perceptions among Children’s Fund local evaluatorsrelating to the extent to which they believed that they had had an influence onpartnerships’ decision making, although for many the relationships betweenpartnerships and evaluators appear to correspond with the problem solving model(Young, et al. 2002) and evaluation findings used instrumentally (Clarke, 2001).Evidence derived from local evaluation reports and interviews with local evaluatorssuggest that the majority of evaluations appear to pragmatically gather and analysedata concerned with the impact of Children’s Fund programmes, or processes suchas children’s participation and partnership working with a view to offering materialthat is intended to be used by partnerships instrumentally, such as through changingpractices and deciding to re-commission particular projects. Indeed, manyprogramme managers participating in the NECF programme managers’questionnaire survey 4 suggested that local evaluation had helped to identifysuccessful/less successful projects (51%) and how they worked well/less well (56%),as well as to make decisions about continuing funding projects (43%) or whichprojects to promote for mainstreaming (39%). Many programme managers alsoindicated that local evaluation had helped the partnership reflect on strategicpractices and how to improve them (43%).There was also some indication that evaluation had offered partnerships newconcepts or broader frames of understanding (corresponding with the enlightenment4 Based on 120 Children’s Fund programme managers’ responses.Chapter 3 39
model and the notion of using evaluation conceptually). 47% of programmemanagers indicated that local evaluation had helped to develop the partnership’sthinking about prevention, partnership working and prevention or as a means ofhelping to promote changes in practices and cultures among mainstream agencies(39%).Importantly, few programme managers suggested that local evaluation had been oflimited value to the partnership (27%), indeed, a number of evaluation reportsidentified where their recommendations have been developed into tangible changesin the partnership, although others appeared not to be certain about how evaluationmaterial had or would influence the partnership. An example from a Wave Twoevaluation demonstrates how data gathered on Children’s Fund projects had had adirect impact on how the partnership directed project work, for example byrecommending the systematic collection of baseline data and the need to encourageinvolvement at project level, of children with special needs.The evaluation report suggests that perhaps the most significant impact of theevaluation data was its influence on decisions around future commissioning ofChildren’s Fund projects, as the following extract describes: ‘Findings from theevaluation informed the deliberations of the X Children’s Fund Appraisal Panel thatmet in December to consider the X Children’s Fund Continuation Funding Proposalsand Appraisal Records, 2004-2006’. Another evaluator, for example, pointed to theimportance of disseminating the issues children raised as part of the evaluation; thishad been particularly influential in terms of informing the partnership:There was work with children who had ADHD a project where they wereparticularly good on participation and they really did, they really kind of broughtwork through that really did involve children and you could see the kind of pridethat those children had in that work and that did, I believe anyway, have animpact on the partnership and also on the work of health professionals in thatarea.Another evaluator suggested that evaluation findings had informed the partnership ofsuccesses among projects; the partnership had drawn on these finding in makingdecisions about which project activities to promote for mainstreaming:… there were pieces of work that I think were mainstreamed in the endbecause of what we said; because the reports that we produced did evidencesuccess in a way that the partnership could understand and in a way which kind40Chapter 3
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RESEARCHLocal Evaluation ofChildren
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When citing this report please show
Page 6 and 7: ContentsExecutive SummaryIIntroduct
Page 8 and 9: Local Evaluation of the Children’
Page 10 and 11: 10. Local evaluators highlighted th
Page 12 and 13: 20. Some evaluators involved childr
Page 14 and 15: successes of partnerships’ work (
Page 16: 38. Conditions reinforcing effectiv
Page 19 and 20: Children’s Fund initiative, namel
Page 21 and 22: engaging with policy makers, practi
Page 23 and 24: starting points and timetables of d
Page 25 and 26: 1. Process evaluation: critical ass
Page 27 and 28: time commitments and pressures amon
Page 29 and 30: tantamount to auditing when origina
Page 31 and 32: to a certain extent, because I was
Page 33 and 34: acknowledge that findings presented
Page 35 and 36: methods that were seen as being app
Page 38 and 39: Chapter 2: Methods Adopted by Child
Page 40 and 41: place. In one Wave One evaluation t
Page 42 and 43: provided by projects weakened the a
Page 44 and 45: confidently attribute any trends in
Page 46 and 47: A Wave Two evaluation report descri
Page 48 and 49: • Recruitment of the researcher:
Page 50 and 51: drawn on by evaluators include semi
Page 52 and 53: Chapter 3: How Local Evaluation Sup
Page 54 and 55: participation and work towards the
Page 58 and 59: of had an impact. So we used a case
Page 60 and 61: Similarly an evaluator of a Wave Tw
Page 62 and 63: Evaluators sometimes struggled to a
Page 64: 6. A number of factors inhibit eval
Page 67 and 68: A number of evaluations described h
Page 69 and 70: 4.2 Key Messages from Local Evaluat
Page 71 and 72: for staff, typically dedicated part
Page 73 and 74: Where partnership working was descr
Page 75 and 76: strategic changes in children’s s
Page 77 and 78: 9. Evaluators reported that some co
Page 79 and 80: The importance of providing finding
Page 81 and 82: National Evaluation of the Children
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